Crosswalk on Android

Usage scenarios

Crosswalk on Android can support packaging with XDK and Cordova and SysApps.

XDK

PhoneGap

SysApps

Packaging modes

Crosswalk on Android provides a packaging tool and Java wrapper layer which can bundle web applications into Android web app APKs. The Java wrapper layer can call Crosswalk runtime. Since Crosswalk runtime is a full-featured web engine mostly written in C/C++ and its size is somewhat big(> 16M), two alternatives are provided to bundle Crosswalk runtime with web apps. Currently the two modes are designed for users:

Embedded mode

Shared mode

General description

All are packaged together, including crosswalk runtime, Java wrapper and a web application into one web app APK. It’s intuitive and preferred for many usage scenarios.

The shared mode provides one shared standalone APK(called Crosswalk runtime library APK). The web app APK only pack web app and the Java wrapper layer which calls the shared binary included in the Crosswalk runtime library APK. So one web app APK is small.

Advantages

It's very important that web app APKs have no other dependencies. All needed are bundled together.

a) It’s small because web app APKs don't pack the crosswalk runtime, but a thin Java wrapper layer. b) Architecture independent. One web app APK can work for both IA and ARM architectures.

Disadvantages

a) Web app APKs are big >16M even for a small web app. b) Architecture dependent. Each web app needs at least two APKs, one is for IA architecture and another is for ARM architecture.